OUR AMBASSADORS

Tracey Edwards has over 25 years’ experience working across a range of businesses from small startup to global organizations in the IT arena. An experienced, technology professional, drawing on substantive experience across a broad range of technology roles, including IT operations, service delivery and project management with global brands such as IBM, NAB, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard and Telstra. Her specialism over the past 10 years has been focused in cybersecurity; this has included regulatory governance, risk management, project & operational delivery and financial accountability.

As the Director of Security at MLC, a wealth management organisation which provides investments, superannuation and financial advice to corporate, institutional and retail customers with $AUD200bn funds under management. Tracey is responsible for delivering Security outcomes across the organization, whilst ensuring practice and compliance uplift across the end to end delivery of security services. Tracey believes in strong stakeholder engagement and C-Suite influence to ensure business and industry leaders understand their digital risk, with cybersecurity as one of the evolving challenges of our generation.

Tracey is also committed to inspiring the next generation of cybersecurity and technology professionals through mentoring and educational contributions, along with her strong desire to build an inclusive and diverse workforce, evidence by her establishing a neurodiversity program in her last senior security role at NAB.

Professor Watters is Academic Dean at Australasian Academies Polytechnic, an ASX-listed education provider. He is also Australia’s leading trusted cybersecurity advisor, thought leader, and founder of Cyberstronomy Pty Ltd, home of the 100pointcybercheck.com.

Michael Fieldhouse is Social Impact Practice Leader and Director of Cybersecurity for DXC technology and the Executive for the Dandelion Program.  Michael holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Technology, Master of Business Administration and is a graduate of the Advance Management Program at Harvard Business School.  La Trobe University has appointment Michael as Adjunct Professor in Cybersecurity and is an advisor to Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal.

Michael Fieldhouse established the Dandelion Program with Australian Federal Government, which is focused on building IT careers for people on the autism spectrum. The program has running for 6+ years with over 120 autistic people in the program with partners such Australian Department of Defence, Department of Home Affairs, Department of Human Services, Department of Social Services, NAB and ANZ Bank in areas of cybersecurity, software testing and data analytics. The Dandelion program has been open sourced with 600+ organisations across 99 countries downloading the material.

Michael has a background in strategy and change management with a particular technical focus on cybersecurity. In his spare time he assists with the development of cybersecurity education programs for primary and secondary school students.

Raza Nowrozy is a Cybersecurity Technical Lead with Untapped and is currently leading a team of gifted autistic people employed as contractors by National Australia Bank. Raza is proud of the efforts produced by his team who have assisted National Australia Bank to deliver successful projects and to support its day-to-day security activities. He also holds the ACS CP Cybersecurity and CISM (Certified Information Security Manager) certifications.

A cybersecurity and tech risk leader with a 2-decade pedigree in global financial services organisations based in Australia and Asia with a passion for explaining the business impact of cyber-attacks, linking cyber events to real actors and motivations, devising intelligence-led cybersecurity and resilience strategies, and aligning cyber capability to regulatory obligations. Prior accountabilities include, law enforcement and criminal intelligence, security strategy, and policy development and implementation.

An acknowledged authority in security, cyber risk and online fraud, Theo has publicly spoken on these topics and holds an MBA (Tech Mgt) from La Trobe University, is Board Certified in Security Management by ASIS International (Certified Protection Professional [CPP]) and has been awarded Fellow of the Australian Information Security Association (FAISA). See Theo speak on engaging executive leadership on cybersecurity matters at the 2019 Adapt CIO Edge Conference https://youtu.be/kLciXledRnY

Soula is the founding Director of Quantum Victoria and brings 30 years of leadership and teaching experience in the Physical Sciences and Mathematics, including 12 years as the President of the Science Teachers’ Association of Victoria (STAV). She is a system leader and thinker and her experience and attributes have been utilised on Advisory Boards of Australian Research Council Centers including, The ARC Centre of Excellence in Free Radical Chemistry and Biotechnology and the Centre of Excellence for All-Sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO). Soula is a member of the Victorian Tech Schools Advisory Panel and contributes to STEM education policy both at a state, national and international level.

John Curtin Distinguished Professor Tele Tan is the Deputy Head of the Electrical Engineering, Computing and Mathematical Sciences School at Curtin University. He is the Founder and Director of the Autism Academy for Software Quality Assurance (AASQA). AASQA is a social innovation initiative with the vision of harnessing the special talents of people on the autism spectrum for the collective benefit of those on the spectrum, industry and the wider community. The mission of the AASQA is to enable these individuals to leverage their unique strength through training, educating, mentoring and internship programs, so as to create pathways to valued, long-term employment; whilst addressing the business needs of the Australian ICT industry facing challenges in attracting and retaining talents within the sector. AASQA sees the opportunity in working with corporates, government and education institutions to address the cybersecurity skills shortage problem in Australia by establishing a pipeline of cybersecurity neurodivergent talents starting from high school.

Tony Vizza has been involved in the information technology and information security fields for more than 25 years.

Tony completed a Bachelor of Science in Computing Science from the University of Technology, Sydney, Global Executive MBA from the University of Sydney which included study at Stanford University, The London School of Economics and the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. He is currently studying for a Juris Doctor degree at the University of New South Wales.

Tony’s information security credentials include CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional), CCSP (Certified Cloud Security Professional), CIPP/E (Certified Information Privacy Practitioner, Europe), CRISC (Certified in Risk and Information Systems Controls), CISM (Certified Information Security Manager) and he is a certified ISO/IEC 27001 Senior Lead Auditor.

Tony is a member of the Board of Directors for the Australian Information Security Association (AISA), Cyber Security Ambassador for the NSW Government, a chair and member of numerous industry committees and has provided expert services to the Australian Government’s Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), the Law Society of NSW, the Australian Security Industry Association Limited (ASIAL) as well as numerous boards.

Professor Ryan Ko is Chair and Director of Cyber Security, and Deputy Head of School (External Engagement) at the University of Queensland, Australia. At UQ, he established UQ Cyber – UQ’s interdisciplinary cyber security education programme and research centre. He previously held scientific leadership roles at Hewlett-Packard Labs and the University of Waikato, New Zealand. His research is central to many cloud security, data provenance and SIEM tools across open source (OpenStack, Kali Linux) and industry tools (ArcSight) today. He has published 100+ publications in top venues (e.g. WWW, IEEE TDSC, IEEE TSC) and has received A$13million in competitive research funding. A Fellow of Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and recipient of the (ISC)2 Information Security Leadership Award, he holds a PhD and B.Eng.(Comp. Eng.)(Hons) from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is the co-founder of the NZ Cyber Security Challenge, Head of Delegation for the Singapore national body at ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27, and drafted the NZQA Level 6 Cyber Security qualification as part of the NZ Cyber Security Skills Taskforce (Dept. of Prime Minister and Cabinet).

Ling is a Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP) since 2007, Ling’s focus in the large system security design, implementation and management.

TN’s mission is to develop and commercialize enabling technology for autism lifespan care, including RoboCoach assistive technology for youth employment. Based on the innovative framework developed by TN, Ling created an employment opportunity called TN Digital Services (TNDS), which currently employs four youth with autism, including his son Brian, to provide document digitization to local public and private sector. To date, workers at TNDS have mastered digitization, completed 500+ banker boxes and a million+ documents with zero error while realizing a proven, sustainable business model.

Ling is working with major partners to grow TNDS internationally. Additionally, Ling is the co-applicant and co-lead of an $8M national Autism CanTech! (ACT!) Program based on RoboCoach. This program, sponsored by Employment and Social Development Canada, a department of the Canadian Federal Government, will develop and rollout the ACT! Program across Canada over the next three years.
(https://autismcantech.ca/home.aspx)